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Honey and burns

I was finishing some maple syrup last night when it boiled over. Without thinking I grabbed the pot off the stove. The boiling over foam ended up all over my hands. Not as bad as a burning clump of sugar , but pretty close.
I put my hands in ice cold water right away. An hour later I couldn't take my hands out of water, I was in so much pain. I knew I was not going to get any sleep. My wife gave me two tylenol pills but they didn't seem to help. Then I found this article. As soon as I smeared the honey on my swelling, blistering fingers I felt the pain go away. Could it be the tylenol kicking in at the exact same time? Possibly. I wrapped my hands in clean gauze and went to sleep. I woke in the morning with still no pain, the honey seemed to have gotten absorbed (by my skin? gauze? both? either way, there was no stickiness on my hands) and the redness, blisters and swelling were hardly visible anymore.
I am still in disbelief.

Don't be in disbelief, Aram! I spoke to a senior citizens group last year about the healthful benefits of honey. I had mentioned using honey in burn dressings and surgical dressings. A few days later I had a message on my answering machine from a woman who had been in the audience of that senior citizens group. She related that she had burned her hand while getting a baking sheet out of the oven the evening before. Remembering what she had heard about using honey for wound dressings, she applied honey to the burns. She said that the next morning the burns were gone and she had no pain. I believe that your experience is real and has been repeated numerous times by others.
Susan

Aram, believe it man. I severely burned my self just last night. I made a pyrax dish in the oven I pulled out and placed on the stove top. Talking to someone a few seconds later I not thinking tried to pick up that disk to put on the trivet with my bare fingers. Instant sizzle and burned skin smell. I instantly grabed the honey jar and slathered on the honey on both hands. In 20 minuits all was fine and I did not even get a blister.

I cook down maple syrup too. I ran 26 taps and got between 5 and 6 gals. of syrup. We cook ours down a little farther than 66 brix more like 67 to 70 brix. But is oh- oh good.
Good luck to ya,
Steve

Thanks all. Great to know it's not all in my head.
Great story Susan. Was the woman elderly? Trauma and healing is a whole other challenge when dealing with the elderly.
Hobie, we have an aloe plant just for that. It helps when the children get a burn boo-boo. I tried the aloe too but, on this occasion, it brought no relief. I had to keep my fingers under cold water, I just couldn't take the pain. I also wander if the quality of the honey had anything to do with it? This was fresh honey, just harvested, crushed and strained through nylon. Never heated and as fresh out of the comb as it ever comes. Lots of ???
Steve, you did good. I got 5 gals out of 40 taps . My friend who does it commercially says he gets about a gallon per tap. But he uses vacuum pumps and all the other gadgets. Somehow I never get close to that. Still, it's such a great thing to do with my children while we wait for spring to arrive. :Sapsucker

Sunburns too!

I’m not considered elderly, yet, but at 67yrs, I was caught up in the romance of snorkeling in the Coral Sea off Vanuatu. The coral was exquisite, but the fish and life forms of all types were totally captivating.

I have Irish type skin, don’t use sunscreens and was not thinking straight either, so half of me (I was face down in the water) got totally cooked by the tropical sun. As a passenger on a cruise ship, I hadn’t been back in my cabin for long when I begin to realize that I was quite a suitable candidate for the ships hospital.

I usually carry a squeeze pack or two of honey with me when I am out and about thus, so honey was not far away and this was not the first time I had used it on sunburn, but certainly the first time I had been so severely burned over so much of my body for a very long time, as I usually cover up pretty carefully. I was also aware that the aging procress does not simply 'arrive' when one turns any certain age. It is entirely incremental, one hour, one day, one year at a time, so I was in 'hot water' so to speak.

I know from years of experience that sunburn is much more suitably avoided than rectified. And I learned that in my youth, so you know how silly I felt to have been caught out in my mature years.

I got into the shower and lathered myself with honey. Just as good no one had a camera handy! I remained in the shower just letting it soak in for maybe twenty minutes, give or take. It seemed like forever to be just standing in the shower! But anyway, I eventually showered and was clean again.

I continued to treat the skin with Aloe Vera jell followed by propolis cream.

I slept well that night, had no pain, and although in subsequent days I lost a layer of fine, dry, scaly skin, never did any blisters appear nor was there any itching or further pain. You might say I was exfoliated painlessly, and had a wonderful experience with my fellows the fish as well.

Some years previous to this I found myself on an exotic beach with no preparation at all and was starting to worry about the sun exposure, when I remembered that I had bought a small pack of honey off the shelf in a truck stop earlier. It was Burleson’s Honey, from Texas, and declared as clover. Well, OK, I think to myself, no one is caring about me on this crowded beach, as there were far too many young and beautiful bodies to watch, so I popped out the honey and lathered it on (complete with the inevitable sand) and continued on enjoying the beach, ………………. and the magnificent views.

When time came to depart, I simply hopped back into the surf to rinse off the honey and the rest of my day continued to be exotic, not destroyed by the disability of sunburn.

The cure was easy, cheap, natural and most of all very effective.

A good book to read if your library has it is, “Honey, Mud and Maggots, and Other Medical Marvels.” (Root-Bernstein) One chapter deals specifically with burns and is a hardnosed scientific look at how honey does this little miracle. The book is worth buying too if you like to be self healing.

Our club just finished a beginners beekeeping course. One of the students was there with his mother and relayed to me a story of how he burned his hand one time and received a Brown Recluse bite another. His mother slathered his burn and he said it stopped burning right away and left no mark when it healed. The bite had become, as they do, nasty. He came to her and asked for some antibiotic creme. When she saw the bite she immediately started treating with honey on a dressing, replacing the dressing every few hours. He said a lot nasty stuff came out but it healed quickly. He was quick to point out that it was raw honey from an older beek who had passed on. They were all set to start their own hives. I had a couple others, in the class, come up and tell me the same thing.
My wife also uses honey on all scraps and what not. She's quick to get it out and our kids now come with a jar of honey and a band-aide or dressing.

So I doubt if it's coincidence. But this is, I guess, considered retorical input.

Re: Honey and burns

I got a bad burn this week while making pancakes and used a salve I got from a local apiary. It has honey and propolis in it, among other good things... probably a little magic in there too
I just found it on their site, if anyone is interested...

Re: Honey and burns

In the Middle Ages honey was used extensively for wound dressings. Sometimes it would be honey with a clove of garlic added, not mashed just peeled and put in with the honey. Of course then we got all modern and caught up with these new improved treatments.... and threw out the baby with the bath water.

Re: Honey and burns

Burns are about as painful as any injury or illness from what I can deduce. Honey on my burns (not life threatening, admittedly) relieves pain so fast I would rather be tossed in the honey tank than taken to the nearest hospital.

It is criminal that we do not treat serious burns with REAL honey. This is not an ad for those products promoted as being scientifically engineered to be used in hospitals etcetera, either, they are simply attempts for the red hots to seize the market back for the pharmaceutical companies. I am talking about good ole country honey from a beehive that has been gathering nectar from flowers!

I woud consider suing any medical establishment who refused to use honey on my children were they to suffer serious burns. I figure I would collect too!

Toss in the fact that honey diminishes scaring, that honey treated wounds do not adhere to the bandages, do not fester and rot, do not stink, and it is CHEAP, and they have no valid excuse whatsoever for not using natural, real, country honey. Oh, and the healing time accelerates rapidly too when real honey is used.

They will go on and on about the risk of infection, but it is all scare tactics. There is so little evidence for this one as to render it absurd that any educated person in a civil country would stoop to using it, but many will and do! To their disgrace.

Don't let them torute you! Instant relief from the pain is available if you have a jar of real honey in your first aid cupboard. I applied some Manuka only last Saturday to a very painful face (from sunburn) and went right back outside on Sunday Morning, pain free and with little evidence of the burn. I know that life threatening burns are life threatening........ no need for anyone to retort with that one, but if one does survive those first critical moments, minutes and hours, HONEY IS THE NEXT ORDER OF THE DAY!

If it doesn't work for you then you aren't working it! If you want pain, good luck!

Re: Honey and burns

There seems to be a lot of excitement about mankua honey these days. I keep reminding people that ALL honey is healing, inside and out.

I read last year (and cannot find the source again, darn it. Will keep looking . . . ) that honey on raw wounds and burns undergoes a slight chemical change and creates small amounts of hydrogen peroxide, which speeds healing.

Wish I had known about that for sunburns years ago. I also have that Irish skin and have received several 2nd degree sunburns while wearing sunscreen. Will try it if it happens again.

We actually had flu come through this area this year. Despite flu shots, the whole family got it, including me. I make them all get their shots because I can't take them (allergic to eggs) and want to avoid flu. So much for the shots. In any event, I started dosing all of us with honey right away. We all averaged a 2-3 day shorter duration than friends and school mates did. And the coughing has been less.

Re: Honey and burns

I never have had any flu shots and don't intend to until they are forced onto me.

I have gradually outgrown, or become immune to most infectious diseases. I guess one will kill me one day too, but something has to.

I stick with the honey and leave the shots behind.

The Manuka does carry a powerful punch, both in the chemical sense and in the placebo effect. It has that aura about it now that does help it work. It is so potent (with non-peroxide activity) that it can actually be poisonous to people who are delicately balanced. That is why it is promoted mainly for topical use, but many people ingest it too and get good benefit from it.

The enzyme you are looking for in the honey is called oxidase. It converts the sugars into hydrogen peroxide as a slow release method of introducing oxygen into the blood and tissues. As you may be aware, most of our modern anti-biotics have the o x y letters somewhere in their name. They are compounds that hold the oxygen in a stable form to be released when in contact with water. Honey is still the best one of them all, as it is still being proven to be effective against the MRSA type bugs that have developed immunity to our proprietary anti-biotics.

Re: Honey and burns

About a month ago I got a nasty burn on my finger from a hot smoker. I decided for the first time to try the honey, so I put some on the burn and wrapped it in gauze (this was after I'd already been outside with it burning for an hour). The pain almost immanently went away, and that evening it barely looked like I had even been burned. I was blown away by how well it worked.

Re: Honey and burns

The most efficacious way to use honey as wound treatment is to saturate a multi-layer sterile gauze with the honey and apply to the clean wound. Cover with clean gauze and replace BID, soaking gently with warm water if necessary to loosen hardened exudate. It's best for "weeping"-type injuries such as burns, decubitus ulcers etc. since the honey's hygroscopicity makes it "pull" moisture through the wound, speeding granulation and bringing fresh lymph through the tissue. Additionally the low pH, H2O2 from glucose oxidase action and osmotic stress it can bring to bear makes for a stressful environment for infectious agents.